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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Diaries

With the Big Ten Tournament now looming and a bid in the NIT (yes, the NIT) rather dependent on at least a decent showing in Chicago, I thought we might reflect on some of the statistical high and lows throughout the season, focusing mainly on the tempo-free stats. However, I can definitely post other metrics if you would like. Sticking with these simply keeps the size of this down.

So, let’s take a look at the four factors throughout the course of 30 games and insert the magic of conditional formatting:

It’s best to start at the top and scroll down – wins are blue, losses are yellow in the “Team” column. It won’t tell you a story that you don’t already know, but it is interesting to see these numbers lined up with those wins and losses. Indeed, everything is going reasonably well even up to the end of the NJIT, as embarrassing as that loss was. We definitely played well enough to win that game but…well, anyway, there was the Eastern Michigan game. Simple, right?

Nope.

Take note of a few things – the EMU game was our worst performance for effective field goal percentage and offensive rebounding percentage, as well as the second worst for turnover rate (the worst performance on that metric is a game we actually won, oddly enough). From there, what follows is a rather rough stretch to end the non-conference schedule highlighted by some high turnover games by Michigan standards and rough shooting performances.

Here’s where the numbers get funny, at least in my opinion. Those first seven games of the conference schedule, where we went 5-2, our eFG% averaged 45.45%, but in the next 11 games – a stretch where Michigan was an inglorious 3-8, our eFG was 50.64%. That represented substantial improvement, if you look at individual games, but then pair that up with who you were playing and you get the idea. The other three metric were otherwise fairly stable throughout with some spot great / not-so-great performances here and there.

Below are some summary averages and some measures of variation:

CONFERENCE AVERAGES

MICHIGAN

OPPONENT

MARGIN

Field Goal %

41.57%

45.60%

-4.03%

Three Point %

35.69%

33.30%

2.39%

Effective FG%

48.62%

51.52%

-2.90%

Free Throw %

79.25%

68.62%

10.62%

Off. Rebound %

25.54%

33.25%

-7.71%

Def. Rebound %

66.75%

74.46%

-7.71%

Assist / Turnover Ratio

1.360

1.295

0.065

True Shooting %

52.81%

54.40%

-1.59%

Free Throw Rate

27.39%

28.87%

-1.49%

Possessions

59.84

59.86

-0.01

Points / Possession

1.04

1.09

-0.05

Turnover %

13.83%

15.27%

-1.44%

Admittedly, the turnover number should have the opposite sign, but you get the idea there for the conference. Here’s the non-conference:

NON-CONFERENCE AVERAGES

MICHIGAN

OPPONENT

MARGIN

Field Goal %

42.55%

44.55%

-2.00%

Three Point %

36.98%

36.83%

0.15%

Effective FG%

50.21%

51.40%

-1.19%

Free Throw %

71.12%

74.88%

-3.76%

Off. Rebound %

26.45%

25.80%

0.65%

Def. Rebound %

74.20%

73.55%

0.65%

Assist / Turnover Ratio

1.62

0.93

0.682

True Shooting %

53.96%

54.07%

-0.11%

Free Throw Rate

31.86%

23.17%

8.70%

Possessions

62.33

63.88

-1.55

Points / Possession

1.09

0.98

0.11

Turnover %

13.50%

20.16%

-6.66%

Those actually look much better, relatively speaking, but they should since we did markedly better in some of these games, at least statistically.

You’ll see a visualization of the conference numbers in a bit (the tempo-free ones), but here are some averages with their accompanying standard deviations so you grasp the variation of play this season.

OVERALL AVERAGE / VARIATION

AVERAGE

STD. DEV.

Field Goal %

41.96%

6.62%

Three Point %

36.21%

10.79%

Effective FG%

49.26%

7.90%

Free Throw %

76.00%

13.22%

Off. Rebound %

25.90%

8.12%

Def. Rebound %

69.73%

9.73%

Assist / Turnover Ratio

1.46

0.94

True Shooting %

53.27%

7.88%

Free Throw Rate

29.18%

13.65%

Possessions

60.84

4.04

Points / Possession

1.06

0.18

Turnover %

13.70%

4.82%

BIG TEN AVERAGE / VARIATION

AVERAGE

STD. DEV.

Field Goal %

41.57%

6.31%

Three Point %

35.69%

9.69%

Effective FG%

48.62%

7.46%

Free Throw %

79.25%

12.95%

Off. Rebound %

25.54%

6.27%

Def. Rebound %

66.75%

7.14%

Assist / Turnover Ratio

1.36

0.89

True Shooting %

52.81%

7.25%

Free Throw Rate

27.39%

13.22%

Possessions

59.84

4.31

Points / Possession

1.04

0.13

Turnover %

13.83%

4.55%

One that strikes me is the variation in A/T ratio. Throughout the season, Michigan averaged 11.3 assists per game with a standard deviation of nearly 4 assists, which to me seems fairly significant. Michigan averaged 9.6 turnovers per game with a standard deviation of a shade more than 3 turnovers, which is significant to me as well. I say that because I then dragged my eyes over to the scoring margin column (which I can post) and it turns out that their average margin of victory / loss is 0.43 points. They are the epitome of a 0.500 team in some ways, at least by the numbers.

Points per possession is another interesting one. For just scoring, consider that Michigan averaged 64.5 point per game with a standard deviation of 11.9 (say, 12) points. That to me is the result of the scoring droughts and the inconsistency in a nutshell, but then you combine with considerable variation elsewhere and it provides support for something we asked quite a bit this year – “Which Michigan will show up today?”

Granted, when your bench depth is now starting and two key starters are out and when you turn around and realize that a workable rotation is not something that will be easy to, well, work, it seems like things like this begin to happen.

Here’s a better visualization of some of the variation in conference play - the four factors are below, but you can see plus / minus one standard deviation marked via the addition of “error bars”, which in this case aren’t really doing what they normally might, but whatever, eh?

For the full size images, you may need to invade my Photobucket space here (LINK). Megagraphs and diaries don't mix.

It is hard to believe but the Softball season is nearly half way completed. We have finished the first segment of the schedule which is primarily weekend tournaments. The second segment of the schedule is the home series with Kent State then the start of the Big Ten Season.

We are currently 22-3 with loses to #1 Florida (twice) and #22 ASU. We are 7-3 over ranked teams, with wins against #3 Alabama (twice), #6 Florida State (twice), #9 Baylor and #21 ASU (twice).

We are ranked #3 this week in the Coaches Poll although we are tied with LSU, who are undefeated along with #1 Florida. Florida remained #1, and Oregon remained #2. We dropped to #4 in the USA Softball poll primarily due to the loss to ASU this past weekend.

Here are some of the team statistics and the national rank (in parentheses)

Batting Average: .345 (20th)

Home runs per game: 1.76 HR/G (4th)

OB %: .448 (13th)

Runs per game: 7.84 (15th)

Slugging %: .619 (5th)

Team ERA: 1.62 (10th)

One area of the game that we are certainly down as compared with previous years is overall team speed. We do not rank high in any of the typical "speed" catagories such as stolen bases, double per game and triples per game. This is a departure for Coach Hutch as she has always had great overall team speed. However, with the offense we have, the team speed is not as important because the timely hitting does enough damage.

We have a player that rank nationally in some important categories. Romo ranks in the top of 6 categories (10 games min).

B/A: 545 (6th)

Slugging %: 1.109% (4th)

OB %: .705 (2nd)

RBIs: 30 (20th)

Runs/game: 1.28 (8th)

HRs: 9 (T-6th)

As you can see, our offense is centered around Romo. The good thing is our 4, 5 and 6 hitters are good enough to bring her in as evidenced by Romo's Runs/Game statistic. If opposing teams choose to pitch to her, great. She will handle her business. If they choose to walk her, great. We have hitters behind her to bring her in.

I just hope more people realize what a very special player we have in Romo. We have not seen the likes of her in over a decade.

In the Individual pitching catagories, we have players in the following:

Ks per 7 innings (10 App min): Megan; 8.5 (32nd)

ERA (20 Inns min): Sara; .78 (9th)

BB per 7 Innings (10 App min): Haylie; 1.24 (17th)

It is great to see all three pitchers rank nationally. This is our core moving into the Big Ten season. Our bats will not be hot in every single game; however, we have 3 awsome pitchers that will keep us in games. This will lead to wins in tight games.

Overall a very good first half of the season. The first loss to Florida was tough to take, then the loss to ASU was heartbreaking. However, we had some very good wins that could have went the other way as well.

My prediction is we will lose one game each to Minny, Maryland and maybe PSU for a 27-3 second half record (20-3 B1G). This puts us at an overall record of 49-6. We will remain in the top 8 and host a Regional and then the Super Regional.

As everyone predicted, Wisconsin ran roughshod through the Big Ten – only tripping up against newcomers Maryland and Rutgers (SERIOUSLY. RUTGERS. HOW.) on the road – winning the league by two games and posting a conference efficiency margin that was 12.5 points / 100 possessions better than the next-best team, Iowa. All hail our Badger overlords. The real validation will have to come in the NCAA Tournament, as Wisconsin will (probably) finally face elite competition there for the first time since early December.

Maryland finished second at 14-4: I’ll address the Terrapins later because there’s a huge dichotomy between their results and their statistical profile. Iowa, Michigan State, and Purdue each tied for third at 12-6 – fitting second-tier parity, also expected due to Wisconsin’s dominance. Ohio State rounds out the group of probable tournament teams with an 11-7 conference record and in sixth place.

The middle tier of the Big Ten effectively cannibalized itself throughout the season; according to the Bracket Matrix as of Monday afternoon, the Big Ten could find three of its best four teams (in my opinion and the opinion of several metrics) in unappealing 7- (Iowa) or 8-seeds (Michigan State, Ohio State). Indiana’s hilarious implosion down the stretch put them squarely on the bubble along with Purdue and Illinois; the Big Ten could theoretically get just five of its 14 teams into the tournament, which would be quite disappointing.

In reality, it’s been a disappointing year in the conference. Michigan and Nebraska were colossal disappointments; the Wolverines were having a nightmare year before brutal injuries effectively put the season out of its misery and the Huskers had everybody back from a tournament team last year and were… inexplicably terrible. Wisconsin is the league’s only top-15 team in Pomeroy’s algorithm and the league’s second-place team, Maryland, finished just 32nd.

After four years as Pomeroy’s top conference, the Big Ten backslid to fourth behind the Big XII, the old Big East, and the ACC. And honestly, we can’t even blame Rutgers for that.

* * *

I guess I’ll get this next part out of the way early -- as our Dear Leader often says, the strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to do this:

These things are really subjective and my vote literally doesn’t count for anything. If you have any complaints or disagreements, please meet me on the Diag at 3:00 A.M. tonight to let me know those concerns so I may better my arbitrary award judgment in the future.

(I did have to put Aubrey Dawkins on there because he’s fire from range and BOFA’d Nnanna Egwu that one time, even if he has a Stauskasesque indifference towards defense.)

* * *

Since I’m an advanced stats guy, I think conference-wide efficiency margin tells the story as well as anything else. Big surprise: Wisconsin’s way out ahead of everyone else.

Maryland (UMD) is sixth! Why is UMD sixth? HOT TAKE ALERT: Maryland isn’t that great. Even though their defense was best in the league by a slight margin over Purdue, their offense finished tenth and their efficiency margin was dragged down by it. Sure, they swept Michigan State and handed Wisconsin one of its only two losses, but the Terps notably struggled in some gimmie games – without losing: they were tied with Rutgers with three minutes left at home; they needed an improbably comeback and difficult buzzer-beater to beat Northwestern at home; Penn State was within one possession of Maryland in College Park with 2 minutes left; they swept Nebraska, but by a combined seven points.

While it’s important to note that Maryland did win all those games, it does reflect a sort of weakness. Very good teams don’t routinely struggle at home against bad ones, and even though the Terps avoided big upsets, those results imply that a) Maryland isn’t as good as its record and b) they’re especially vulnerable, at least relative to their perception. They’re currently ranked 8th and are in line for a 3-seed; they’re 25th in Sagarin and 32nd in Kenpom. Kenpom also has a “Luck” stat – which essentially highlights the difference between a team’s actual and expected results – and Maryland is first out of 351 teams nationally. Don’t be surprised if there’s a seemingly harsh regression to the mean next year.

Over the season, I created the “Game Score” metric, which essentially normalizes a team’s performance based on their opponent’s average on both the offensive and defensive ends. For example, an offensive game score of zero would be an efficiency mark that’s equal to an opponent’s average defensive efficiency and a defensive game score of one would be holding that opponent to one standard deviation below their normal offensive output. The total game score would be one. It’s an intuitive metric, and it spits out these results:

Click on images to enlarge; the scatterplot’s x-axis (offense) is – 1 > x > 1, the y-axis (defense) is –5 > y > 5. The question mark pattern in the scatterplot is indicative of the mystery of the Big Ten’s bloated middle, or something.

In probably the worst case scenario, Michigan hockey dropped both games at Penn St, while other things in the conference have basically assured that the B1G will be a ONE BID CONFERENCE. Yes, you read that right-- the conference of multiple national champions Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will get a grand total of 1 team into the NCAA tournament this year. The breakdown:

- Michigan sits tied for 19th in PairWise Ranking (PWR). It would take essentially a 3-4 game win streak to get back into the 14th or higher PWR position, and with the results from this past weekend that's no guarantee since the teams above UM are all still alive in their conference tourneys and wil be playing meaningful opponents meaning their PWR will probably not take a huge hit at this point. BTW- a 4 game win streak means we won the BTT which makes the at-large bid a moot point anyway.

- Minnesota with their split against Ohio St, now sits on the hairy precipice of losing their at-large bid fallback plan (sound familiar?). They are tied for 14th in PWR and need a winning streak to stay up (remember the 16th slot in the tourney this year is already tabbed essentially for the Atlantic Hockey tourney champ, so any at large teams are going to have to finish at least 15th in PWR, more likely 14th or higher to absorb a cinderella tourney champ from another conference). A sweep for Minnesota next week against Penn St and a Semi final win in the BTT might still get them in as an at-large, but they're going to have to hope that 1 and 2 seeds in confernce tourneys win out so that the PWR 13-18 teams don't get a bump from a winning streak in their conference tourneys.

- It's basically cannibalism at this point in the B1G tourney. A cinderella run resulting in a tourney championship from a team not in consideration today (PSU, OSU, MSU, WIscy) will definately knock Michigan out of an at-large run, and possibly/probably Minnesota too (especially if it's two cinderella teams in the final, i.e. Michigan and Minnesota lose in the tourney semis).

- And oh BTW, in case you needed more depressing news, Michigan State is in the drivers seat to hang a banner as B1G Regulart Season champions. As if they needed more motivation for next weekend, MICHIGAN STATE can win the regular season conference title with a sweep against us, no matter what Minnesota does. A split with us and a Minnesota split gives Sparty the title too. Talk about depressing. Now I know how Tottenham fans feel. (apologies for the EPL reference)

Silver linings and bottom lines? A couple:

- Michigan's only viable path to a NCAA bid at this point is likely to win the tourney title. Not out of the realm of possibility at all, but with the consistency (and frankly coaching / testicular fortitude) questions overhanging the team, I wouldn't bet on it.

- We still can salvage some Europa League title like satisfcation next weekend. If we sweep, we win the B1G regular season and hang a banner next year. We would be at worst tied with Minnesota in points and we win the tiebreaker over the Gophers based on more wins in conference. (Insert tiny flag waving here). Maybe that motivation is tangible enough to get an inspired performance for two games in a row??? The way thigns are shaking out, I'd hope for a Michigan sweep and a split by Minnesota with Penn St so that Penn St stays out of our semifinal.

Side thought stream of consciousness: I mentioned it in a comment on the Saturday night open thread, but we may seriously need to think about sacraficing some sort of animal with an Al Montoya jersey on it. Every since he left the season early in 2005, Michigan has not had that 3-4 year recruited goaltender that the 90's - early 2000's powerhouses could rely on. We lucked into Tiny Jesus Shawn Hunwick after whiffing on / getting mugged by John Gibson and our goaltending has not been consistently adequate in going on 10 years... Is this the REAL failure of the contemporary Red Berenson era? Not being able to close the deal on a top flight goaltender?? Is this something that falls on Billy Powers or Josh Blackburn? Will I need a really big bottle of scotch next weekend??

Thought I'd take a look at the last 10 years of DBs in "5 star status" - which I chose as the top 25ish players in the 247 Composite rankings. There are a lot of names so I only got through 4 years in heavy detail: 2005-2008. 14 players. Here is how those players did in the first 2 years of their careers along with what happened to them down the road.

Obvious caveats are obvious - (i) every player is an entity unto himself, (ii) what a prior group of players did is no guarantee of what a future group of similar players will do, (iii) small sample size.

But... it should give us a reasonable variance of expectation.

Year

Rank

2005

8

FR

Started 11 games @ FS, ACC All Freshman, 67 tackles, 1 INT

Kenny Phillips

SO

Started 10 games, ACL injury, 54 tackles, 4 INT, 2nd Team All American

It is interesting how this group panned out - there were not a lot of just "good college players" like I expected when a 5 star does not fully pan out - i.e. he was not "all that" but ended up being a solid CFB player. Instead most of these guys were elite... or bombed out. A few guys like Hill and Morley seemed like they could have been better as well but had off the field issues - which does not seem to pertain to Peppers (but I guess we never really know do we?)

Also every guy who was "stud" or "above average" except for Mays (7 of 8, 88%) left after their JR year. So if Peppers is anywhere near the hype, it would be unrealistic to expect more than 2 year more from him at UM. Which makes the freshman year injury that much more stinky.

One other note as I went through these; it felt like a lot more of this group turned into safeties than corners. And there were a lot less INTs than I expected from this group in general outside Eric Berry.

* I put Rolle in STUD level despite the NFL draft placement because as I recall he wanted to study to be a doctor and that put off some teams with the whole Rhodes Scholar thing (I think it required him to take a year off).

** Torn on putting King in stud category but decided to throw him in above average

FUCK THIS SHIT!!!! I have been working on this for 2 hours now. had tables which took FOR EVER to work out and then when i went to USCHO.com to look at pairwise I come back to the Diary page and it is all gone.

It shouldn't be this difficult so I'm saying fuck it. I got better stuff to do. I have almost broken my keyboard figuring this shit out for nothing.....

So here is the last part that I hadn't written up yet. I will be posting Open Threads Friday and Saturday this week as I will not be attending the Michigan games.

Michigan is currently in a tie for 15th in the Pairwise. I have run a few tests based off this weeks matchups assuming the following
-Michigan State sweeps Wisconsin
-Minnesota sweeps Oho State
-Rensselaer is swept by Clarkson
-Harvard sweeps Brown
-Northeastern sweeps Merrimack
-New Hampshire sweeps Connecticut
-Vermont sweeps Maine
-Denver sweeps St. Cloud State
-Bowling Green sweeps Alabama-Huntsville

some of these are part of conference playoffs and wouldn't allow for a third game so i had to go with sweeps.

If that happens this is where I have Michigan ending up based of the following scenarios
-Michigan sweeps Penn State: tied for 11th
-Michigan splits with Penn State: tied for 16th
-Michigan wins and ties (goes to shootout): 12th
-Michigan loses and ties (goes to shootut): 19th
-Michigan is swept:20th

a sweep puts them in position to actually be a 3 seed. A win on Friday night will ease concerns and leave them with a shot at an at-large. Lose Friday and and Saturday is a MUST WIN.

My Prediction: Split

3 Things Michigan needs
-a win this weekend
-Minnesota to sweep (this is actually a HUGE deal for Michigan)
-Michigan State to sweep (NEED them to move up for next weekends showdown)